View from The Hill: Chris Minns makes sense on ISIS brides’ children, while opposition adds to scaremongering

Among today’s leaders, New South Wales Premier Chris Minns is notable in a couple of ways.

As a Labor leader, his views are a mix of the extremely tough and the very empathetic and compassionate. His handling of the antisemitism crisis illustrates the point.

Also, Minns usually speaks his mind, and answers questions, with a frankness many of his contemporaries shy away from.

These features were evident in Minns’ Monday comments about the cohort of 34 ISIS brides and their children that has the Albanese government tied in knots and new Opposition Leader Angus Taylor responding with a knee-jerk proposal for draconian legislation.

Minns told a Monday news conference: “I’ve got no sympathy for someone who makes a decision to go and join a dangerous ideology like Islamic State”, but “I do have sympathy and concern for the children”.

He said he’d been briefed late last year on state-federal consultations about possible arrivals from Syria.

“It’s been on an official-to-officials level, and it has to do with what happens if or when they return to New South Wales. That was a situation for previous cohorts that came back to Australia [under the Morrison and Albanese governments]. He estimates about a third of the cohort would go to NSW.

In relation to the children, Minns points out that if they stayed in their present environment, when they did return the position would likely be worse.

"I think most Australians […] would say, "well, what is going to happen to these children in the years ahead if they end up in Australia, if they are Australians? What happens to them when the media moves on and we’re two to five to ten years down the line?”

He said the NSW government would take care of the education of returning children (in a context of Australian values), while the “full force of the law” would be applied to the adults (who could face charges).

Minns’ combination of commonsense, concern and directness is in contrast to the stance of the federal government. It has toughened its rhetoric, presumably mainly to avoid being wedged by the opposition and One Nation. It may have also been less than fully transparent about federal officials’ involvement.

Minns’ views about the children are in line with comments of then home affairs minister Clare O'Neil in 2022, after a group of ISIS brides and children had been brought back. “The question for us is: is the safest thing for these 13 children to grow up in a squalid camp where they’re subjected to radical ideologies every single day and then return to Australia at some point when they’re an adult, or is it safer for us to bring them here so they can live a life around Australian values?”

Now Anthony Albanese and current Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, when referring to the children, basically say their situation is the parents’ fault and that’s that. They are more interested in keeping out the remaining cohort as long as possible – therefore pushing the problem down the track – than focusing publicly on the practicalities of when the families can no longer be stopped from returning.

The opposition’s proposal to make it a criminal offence “to facilitate the re-entry of individuals linked to terrorist hotspots or terrorist organisations, or who have committed terror related offences” is performative politics.

These people are Australian citizens and have a right to return to Australia (with some qualifications – the government applied for an exclusion order against one person on security grounds). To make it a crime for an individual or organisation to assist them in some presently lawful manner would seem highly dubious in principle.

When we come to the practicalities: those helping have been Save the Children and respected Muslim figure Jamal Rifi. Rifi was a prominent supporter of Burke in last year’s election. In earlier years he has defended Scott Morrison against accusations of racism and is much respected by Morrison.

But home affairs spokesman Jonno Duniam said: “This is not about targeting a particular group or individual or organisations. It is about targeting anyone who breaks the law”.

The opposition says the private member’s bill, to be introduced in the coming sitting fortnight but destined to go nowhere, will provide that “humanitarian or security-based repatriation could continue with the express permission of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Home Affairs”.

It is about keeping repatriation formally in the hands of government, attempting to stymie self-managed returns and those who might assist them.

But we don’t have any detail, leaving exactly who would be hit as clear as mud.

Mat Tinkler, CEO Save the Children Australia, told the ABC his organisation had done two main things: provided humanitarian relief for the cohort, and advocated for the government to get them home.

“What we haven’t done is engage in any extraction or operation on the ground – that is not within our mandate and not something we would do.

"But I’m really concerned about the sentiment that this seems to express, that somehow supporting women who haven’t been charged, they haven’t been put on trial, they haven’t been convicted of any crime, and their children, who by nature and definition are innocent, trying to criminalise conduct of people seeking to bring those Australian citizens back to Australia – I think it’s a very slippery slope if we go down that path.”